State Rep. Alicia Reece only local legislator listed as co-sponsor

A group
of Ohio House Democrats wants Congress to move quickly and grant
statehood to Puerto Rico, which has been a U.S. possession since the
Spanish-American War ended in 1898.The
Ohioans do not say where the star should go on a redesigned American
flag, but they said statehood would “respect the rights of
self-governance through consent of the governed of our fellow United
States citizens residing in Puerto Rico.”

The chief
sponsor of the resolution, H.C.R. 57, is State Rep. Dan Ramos of Lorain,
a northern Ohio city where about 25 percent of the 64,000 residents are
Hispanic.Lorain is considered the most Hispanic city in Ohio, and nearly 20 percent of its population claims Puerto Rican descent.The resolution urging statehood was introduced this week in the Ohio House where it likely faces an uncertain future.The current term of the legislature is scheduled to end in December, and it has no Republican co-sponsors.The GOP controls the House, which means that Democratic proposals often get bottled up or receive short shrift.

Earlier this month, a slight majority of Puerto Ricans voted in favor of statehood for the Caribbean Island.It was the first time a statehood referendum has won there,
and the non-binding vote was seen as signaling that many Puerto Ricans
appear ready to end the island’s status as a U.S. commonwealth. The move by the Ohio House Democrats also appears aimed at cementing the party’s support among Hispanic voters.Some
70 percent of Hispanics backed the Democrats and President Obama on Election
Day, and Hispanics are emerging as a key bloc with increasing power at
the ballot box.

With the
exception of State Rep. Alicia Reece, a Cincinnati Democrat, all of the
other House Democrats backing the statehood resolution are from Columbus
or further north in Ohio.The resolution urges Congress to take swift action “towards admitting the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico to the Union as a State.”Statehood decisions are up to Congress.The
Ohio resolution points out that Puerto Ricans are already U.S. citizens
(although they cannot vote in presidential elections), and that many
serve in the U.S. military.A 1917 law granted residents U.S. citizenship.

There is a historical footnote involving Cincinnati in Puerto Rico’s fate.Former
GOP President William Howard Taft, a Cincinnatian who went on to serve
as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in the 1920s, delivered a major
legal decision in 1922 that helped keep Puerto Rico separate.Taft
said the congressional act that conferred citizenship on the islanders
did not contemplate that they would be incorporated into the Union.He ruled the U.S. possession had never been designated for statehood.Taft gave the island a unique status that has been described as a commonwealth, or as it is said in Spanish, “Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico.”

Actress and acclaimed rapper Natalie Portman played up her
Cincinnati ties in a Wednesday appearance at the Obama campaign-sponsored
Women’s Summit at Union Terminal.

The Academy Award-winner said her mother graduated from
Walnut Hills High School and her grandfather — Art Stevens — grew Champion
Windows in Cincinnati after starting as a door-to-door salesman.

“Because of that, I see President Obama’s support of small
businesses as so crucial to our economy,” Portman said, adding that Obama has
cut taxes for small businesses 82 times since taking office.

Portman said the Republican Party and their presidential
ticket of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan did not have the best interests of women at
heart. She pointed to attacks on the Affordable Care Act’s mandates that
insurers provide birth control to women and ensure preventative care such as
mammogram screenings for breast cancer is covered, as well a bill sponsored by
Ryan and embattled congressional candidate Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) that would
eliminate all abortion funding except for cases of “forcible rape.”

“We need to stand up for ourselves,” Portman told the packed
auditorium that was crowded with an audience of mostly women. “Our mothers and
our grandmothers made giant steps for us. We can’t go backwards. We need to go
forwards.”

An Ohio Romney rep said the campaign did not have a comment
on the Women’s Summit, but is hosting a “Women for Mitt” call night featuring
former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao in Kenwood on Thursday.

“Ohio women believe in the Romney-Ryan
path for America that will result in lower taxes, less spending, less
government and more economic growth,” said a release from Romney’s campaign.

The Obama event on Wednesday catered to
women, with Chapek telling the audience she knew how difficult it was for women
to get there with jobs and the challenge of getting their kids to school. She
framed women’s role in the election as a conversation.

“The conversation starts like this:
women, turns out, we’re not a constituency,” Chapek said. “Who knew? Apparently
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, because they don’t realize that women are actually a
majority in this country.”

She told the women gathered to have conversations with their
neighbors and friends and encourage them to volunteer at phone banks or
knocking on doors.

Strickland talked about the need to reconcile qualities
traditionally seen as masculine — like power — with those seen as feminine —
like love.

She also took the opportunity to riff on a statement made by
Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who said political wives were heroes because while they’re
husbands were on stage in the limelight, they were at home doing things like
laundry.

“I even did the laundry last night so I could come here
today,” Strickland said. “Even (former Gov.) Ted does the laundry.”

“I’m a celebrity photo enthusiast,” he said. “Nothing’s
official until I’ve taken a picture of it.”

Boston said he didn’t vote in 2008, but felt the upcoming
November election was too important to sit out. He said he was leaning toward
voting for Obama and liked his health care overhaul, but was opposed to the
president’s views on gay marriage for religious reasons.

Gwen McFarlin, who works in health care administration, said
she was there to support President Obama. She supports his health care overhaul,
but thinks it’s a first step to further changes.

She said she was encouraged by the diversity of the women in
attendance.

“For me, I’m sure the women who are here represent all
the world, not one issue,” she said. “We’re here as a group of women working to
empower all the U.S. and the world.”

Following a long battle with cancer, former Cincinnati City Councilman and Vice Mayor David Crowley passed away early this morning.

Crowley, 73, had struggled with the illness since leaving City Council in 2009 due to term limits. After a grueling round of chemotherapy that took a toll on his body, Crowley appeared to have beaten the disease but it recently returned. He is survived by his wife, Sherri, four children and six grandchildren.

That's how long it has been sinceCityBeate-mailed Mike Wilson, a Republican candidate and Cincinnati Tea Party leader, to learn why he skipped a planned appearance at a candidates' forum Wednesday night in Forest Park. So far, we've received no reply.

Even as the local Republican Party searches for a competent person willing to take on Hamilton County Commissioner Todd Portune in next year's election, the GOP chairman insists the party won't be cutting another deal to let Portune run unopposed.

With the Dec. 7 filing deadline now past, the Hamilton County Republican Party has listed one of its staffers, Finance Director Maggie Nafziger Wuellner, as a placeholder to reserve a spot on the ballot against Portune, a longtime Democratic incumbent.

It appears there will be 22 candidates on the ballot in November vying for the nine open seats on Cincinnati City Council.

As of today's 4 p.m. filing deadline at the Board of Elections, that's the number of people who had submitted petitions with enough voter signatures. At least five of those candidates, however, haven't yet had the signatures verified by Elections Board staffers because they only filed their final petitions today.

Claim True the Vote is unnecessarily intimidating voters

Ohio Senate Democrats sent a letter to Ohio Secretary of
State Jon Husted and Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine on Wednesday asking them
to investigate True the Vote (TTV), a Tea Party group established to
combat alleged voter fraud. The Democrats claim TTV is unnecessarily
intimidating voters.

In the letter, the Democrats say they would find voter
fraud to be a serious problem if it was happening, but they also note
recent studies have found no evidence of widespread voter impersonation fraud. An Oct. 4
Government Accountability Office study could not document a single case
of voter impersonation fraud. A similar study by News21, a Carnegie-Knight
investigative reporting project, found a total of 10 cases of alleged
in-person voter impersonation since 2000. That’s less than one case a
year.

Tim Burke, chairman of both the Hamilton County Board of
Elections and the Hamilton County Democratic Party, says the faulty
voter registration forms, which groups like TTV typically cite as
examples of in-person voter fraud, never amount to real voter fraud.

“Those nonexistent voters never show up to vote,” he says.
“(The forms) were put together by people working on voter registration drives.
Frankly, the intent wasn’t to defraud the board of elections; the
intent was to defraud their employer into making them think they’re
doing more work.”

In other words, people aren't submitting faulty voter registration forms to skew elections; registration drive employees are submitting the forms to try to keep their jobs.

To combat the seemingly nonexistent problem of voter
impersonation fraud, TTV is planning on recruiting one million poll
watchers — people that will stand by polling places to ensure the voting
process is legitimate. The Democrats insist some of the tactics
promoted by the group are illegal. The letter claims it’s illegal for
anyone but election officials to inhibit the voting process in any way.
Most notably, Ohio law prohibits “loiter[ing] in or
about a registration or polling place during registration or the casting
and counting of ballots so as to hinder, delay, or interfere with the
conduct of the registration or election,” according to the letter.

Burke says state law allows both Democrats and Republicans
to hire observers at polling booths. However, the observers can only
watch, and they can’t challenge voters. Even if the appointed observers see suspicious
activity, they have to leave the voting area and report the activity
through other means.

The tactics adopted by TTV have an ugly history in the U.S.
Utilizing poll watchers was one way Southern officials pushed away
minority voters during the segregation era. By asking questions and
being as obstructive as possible, the poll watchers of the segregation
era intimidated black voters into not voting. In the post-segregation
era, the tactics have continued targeting minority and low-income
voters.

The Senate Democrats make note of the ugly history in their
letter: “It has traditionally focused on the voter registration lists in
minority and low-income precincts, utilizing ‘caging’ techniques to
question registrations. It has included encouraging poll watchers to
‘raise a challenge’ when certain voters tried to vote by brandishing
cameras at polling sites, asking humiliating questions of voters, and
slowing down precinct lines with unnecessary challenges and intimidating
tactics. These acts of intimidation undermine protection of the right
to vote of all citizens.”

TTV has already faced some failures in Hamilton County.
Earlier this year, the group teamed up with the Ohio Voter Integrity Project (VIP),
another Tea Party group, to file 380 challenges to the Hamilton County
Board of Elections. Of the 380 challenges, only 35 remain. The vast
majority were thrown out.

“For the most part, they tried to get a bunch of UC
students challenged because they didn’t have their dormitory rooms on
their voter registration rolls,” Burke says. “All of those were
rejected. We did nothing with those.”

But he said the group did bring up one legitimate
challenge. Some voters were still registered in a now-defunct trailer
park in Harrison, Ohio. Since the trailer park no longer exists,
Burke says no one should be voting from there. The board didn’t purge
those voters from the roll, but the board unanimously agreed to ensure those voters are challenged and sent to the correct polling place if they show up to vote.

Still, TTV insists on hunting down all the phantom
impersonators and fraudulent voters. In partnership with VIP, TTV is continuing its mission to stop all the voter impersonation that isn't actually happening.

VIP is brandishing the effort with a program of its own. That organization is now hosting special
training programs for poll workers. The organization insists
its programs are nonpartisan, but Democrats aren’t buying it.

Burke says it’s normal for Democrats and Republicans to
hire poll workers, but if the Voter Integrity Project program puts the
organization’s anti-fraud politics into the training, it could go too
far.

“The job of the poll worker is to assist voters in getting
their ballots cast correctly,” Burke says. “It’s to be helpful. It’s
not to be belligerent. It’s not to be making voters feel like they’re
doing something evil.”

He added, “If poll workers are
coming in and deciding that they’re going to be aggressive police
officers making everybody feel like they’re engaged in voter fraud and
therefore trying to intimidate voters, that’s absolutely wrong.”

America is a country at war. While the war in Iraq
ostensibly drew down in December 2011, the United States has been
quagmired in a war in Afghanistan for more than a decade.

But we're also in the midst of a number of other wars — cultural wars. It started with Nixon’s War on Drugs, then quickly escalated.

President Barack Obama’s environmental regulations on coal
mining caused proponents to claim he had declared a War on Coal. The
Affordable Care Act’s mandate that companies pay for employee
contraception caused many faith groups to claim a War on Religion.

Statements from Republican politicians about “legitimate
rape” and “binders full of women” caused some Democrats to claim the GOP
had declared a War on Women.

And the ever-vigilant conspiracists news hounds at FOX
News have exposed a scheme by Jesus-hating liberals to wage a War on
Christmas for trying to remove constitutionally questionable dolled-up
trees and pastoral scenes of babies in unsuitable barn-life cribbery
faith-based displays from public property.

But by far the most heinous altercation being waged
originated with Republican Ohio Senate President Tom Niehaus, who has
declared a War on Babies.

As first reported by The Enquirer, conservative groups
this week sent out a press release vilifying Niehaus for killing tons of babies in a
mass effort to wipe out the state’s youth population a 17-month old bill
that would give Ohio one of the strictest abortion laws in the nation.

Niehaus moved the so-called Heartbeat Bill — which would
ban all abortions after the first detectable fetal heartbeat — from the
Health Committee to the Rules and Reference Committee to avoid a forced
vote on the legislation. He also removed staunch anti-abortion Senators
Keith Faber and Shannon Jones from that committee.

“I’m shocked by Tom Niehaus’ war on pro-life women,” wroteLori
Viars in the news release. Viars is the vice president of Warren County
Right to Life and vice chair of Warren County Republican Party.

Viars called for Republicans to remove Niehaus from Senate
leadership. Niehaus is term-limited and will not continue on in office
after this year.

Niehaus blamed Romney’s loss for his decision to kill the
bill, saying that the Republican’s victory would have increased the
likelihood of a U.S. Supreme Court lineup that would uphold it against a
likely challenge.

Seelbach, 30, is an Xavier University graduate who helped lead the successful effort in 2004 to repeal Article 12, the anti-gay law that cost Cincinnati more than $25 million in lost business, according to the Convention and Visitors Bureau.

As Bernadette Watson decides whether to run for Cincinnati City Council again in 2011, she's keeping busy by helping a former council member get elected to state office.

Watson has been named as campaign manager for Alicia Reece, a Democrat who is seeking to keep the Ohio House 33rd District seat. Reece, an ex-Cincinnati vice mayor, was appointed to the seat in March to replace Tyrone Yates. Yates, who was facing term limits, was appointed to a municipal judgeship.